Supporting Freedom Through Grassroots Action

What a day and half in northern California! On Friday, my first appointment was at 6:00 am, and my day ended at 11:00 pm. I did radio and tv interviews in San Francisco, followed by a meeting with the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle. The questions were tough but fair: my favorite! Meanwhile, more and more interview requests pour into the campaign. There is a real hunger for our ideas, even in the mainstream media. The message of liberty is popular!

Then I headed for Google, one of Americas great businesses. Some of the young stars who populate that company took me on a tour of a firm that seemed like a university student union. I saw where everyone works, eats, and exercises. Next I did a political YouTube interview with questions submitted from the web. I was told that never had Google, in the entire history of this series, received the sheer number of questions that it had for my interview. People care about freedom.

Then I spent an hour answering questions from Google employees, crowded into a large room with overflow rooms overflowing too. Next was fascinating briefing from some of the technical heads of Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Apps, and other extraordinary innovations. Then there was a press conference for the media gathered in a company courtyard, and then a fundraising reception that a group of Google employees had organized off-site. In the evening there was another successful fundraiser.

Saturday morning was the Silicon Valley Meetup in a park right next to Google. A huge and enthusiastic crowd was there to hear about our ideas, and the diversity was astounding. There were bikers in leather and hippies, young parents and grandparents, high-tech workers and business owners, and so many young Americans.

I talked about all our ideas: marching out of Iraq just as we marched in; no more meddling in the Middle East; bringing the troops home, from hundreds of expensive bases all over the world, so that we could have the money we need for the transition to freedom in social programs, and to abolish the personal income tax and the IRS. They are not compatible with a free society.

In a Ron Paul administration, we would also repeal the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act, restore habeas corpus and stop the spying on Americans. No more eavesdropping on our emails and bank accounts, our phone calls, home and businesses. No national ID — just the bracing freedom of the Constitution.

We must have sound money, and not a giant counterfeiting machine called the Federal Reserve that causes recessions and inflation. We must have private property rights, with no pollution or other attacks on property. We should enforce the Second Amendment, and all the Bill of Rights. We can have privacy for us, not secrecy for a corrupt bureaucracy.

It is all within our grasp, the restoration of the republic and our sovereignty — no UN, no North American Union, no Nafta, no WTO, no World Bank, no IMF. Just federalism, free enterprise, peace, prosperity, and the kind of future we all want for our families, ourselves, and our fellow Americans.

The dream can be a reality. You can help make it so. Please: make your most generous donation to this effort for America’s future (https://www.ronpaul2008.com/donate/). Instead of wars and inflation and spying and poverty, we can have peace and freedom and the blessings for our children and grandchildren of doing better than we have, of secure retirements and childhoods. No more theft — of our savings or our liberty.

I’ve been paying a LOT of attention recently to the Federal Election Commission’s Report of Receipts and Disbursements for the current candidates for President of the United States. What has become apparent to me as I sift through the data is that they reveal a high degree of corruption. I would like to compare the candidates using some mathematical analysis based on employer contributions. I hope to derive a “corruption quotient” (CQ) by revealing the percentage of each candidates contributions that are in some way illicit.

To do this is a simple matter. I will take the number of campaign dollars received by each candidate for which no employer was reported. If this was a simple matter of some private donors failing to fill out a form properly or choosing to omit their employer, the rate should be at least approximately the same for each candidate. But as we will see, this is not how it turns out at all.

To derive a final “corruption quotient,” I will divide the number of “no employer was supplied” dollars and divide it by that candidate’s total received funds for the quarter. This will tell us what portion of each candidate’s funds require such secrecy that the donor must remain anonymous. The breakdown is as follows:

An astounding level of corruption from all of the front-runners. Even Clinton’s 7.8% leaves me feeling slightly queasy. But there’s no such thing as an honest politician, and this is to be expected, right? I mean, who could possibly set a better example than Hillary Clinton? Your answer is right here:

Not one percent. Not one tenth of one percent. Not one hundredth of one percent. An astounding four and a half THOUSANDTHS of a percent. How often do you get to use the word thousandth? Thank you, Dr. Paul, for giving me the opportunity to use one of the only two words in the English language containing the string “dth.”

But as I compiled these data I thought to myself, perhaps there’s a scale bias occurring? Maybe these kind of tremendous numbers only occur when you start talking about total contributions of a scale that only the front-runners show? To test this theory, I calculated the “corruption quotient” of the Senator from my home state, Senator Joe Biden, who happens also to be a Presidential candidate. Here’s what I found:

Okay, sure, it’s not measured in the THOUSANDTHS of a percent, but at least he’s under one percent, right? He may be 130.5 times more corrupt than Ron Paul, but at least he’s well below Billary Clinton. Perhaps it is just a matter of scale, to some degree, since Biden ranks so far below the front-runners as well in CQ.

Brownback! How COULD you? Nearly half of your campaign contributions don’t list an employer? So much for the theory that proportion doesn’t hold in this calculation.

Ron Paul is a staunch defender of American liberty, a bulwark against the corruption that plagues Washington, and perhaps our last chance to save our government from the poisonous involvement of special interests and political action committees.

About

As you inferred from the URL, this blog is dedicated to Ron Paul, Republican contender for the party’s endorsement for President. This blog’s author, David Armor, enjoys many different activities, including strategy games, reading textbooks, making hummus and sushi, and blogging when he finds the time. Ron Paul, however, is much more interesting. Rather than a droll attempt to explain Ron Paul to you, I will emulate nearly exactly his campaign site’s “About Ron” page right here:

Congressman Ron Paul is the leading advocate for freedom in our nation’s capital. As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dr. Paul tirelessly works for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies. He is known among his congressional colleagues and his constituents for his consistent voting record. Dr. Paul never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution.In the words of former Treasury Secretary William Simon, Dr. Paul is the “one exception to the Gang of 535” on Capitol Hill.

Ron Paul was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Gettysburg College and the Duke University School of Medicine, before proudly serving as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force during the 1960s. He and his wife Carol moved to Texas in 1968, where he began his medical practice in Brazoria County. As a specialist in obstetrics/gynecology, Dr. Paul has delivered more than 4,000 babies. He and Carol, who reside in Lake Jackson, Texas, are the proud parents of five children and have 17 grandchildren.

While serving in Congress during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dr. Paul’s limited-government ideals were not popular in Washington. In 1976, he was one of only four Republican congressmen to endorse Ronald Reagan for president.

During that time, Congressman Paul served on the House Banking committee, where he was a strong advocate for sound monetary policy and an outspoken critic of the Federal Reserve’s inflationary measures. He was an unwavering advocate of pro-life and pro-family values. Dr. Paul consistently voted to lower or abolish federal taxes, spending and regulation, and used his House seat to actively promote the return of government to its proper constitutional levels. In 1984, he voluntarily relinquished his House seat and returned to his medical practice.

Dr. Paul returned to Congress in 1997 to represent the 14th congressional district of Texas. He presently serves on the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He continues to advocate a dramatic reduction in the size of the federal government and a return to constitutional principles.

Congressman Paul’s consistent voting record prompted one of his congressional colleagues to say, “Ron Paul personifies the Founding Fathers’ ideal of the citizen-statesman. He makes it clear that his principles will never be compromised, and they never are.” Another colleague observed, “There are few people in public life who, through thick and thin, rain or shine, stick to their principles. Ron Paul is one of those few.”

Brief Overview of Congressman Paul’s Record:

He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
He has never taken a government-paid junket.
He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.

He voted against the Patriot Act.
He voted against regulating the Internet.
He voted against the Iraq war.

He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program.
He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.

Congressman Paul introduces numerous pieces of substantive legislation each year, probably more than any single member of Congress.